Dust collectors or dust collection systems are well known in the art. These systems are used to filter particles out of air that is drawn from various sources including fume and ventilation hoods used in industrial applications such as welding and chemical and pharmaceutical processing.
Currently the stream of dirty air generated by the fume and ventilation hoods is drawn directly into a dirty-air chamber contained within the dust collector. Once inside, the dirty air drifts down over the rows of filter cartridges aligned within the chamber.
In most operations, a conventional fan is used to create the pressure drop that allows the dirty air to be drawn into the chamber. Because of this, the direction of the flow of air once inside is primarily dependent upon the amount of pressure differentiation created by the fan and includes the directed air flow through the entrance port and the location of filters inside the chamber. This can cause the air to be unevenly distributed across the filter cartridges resulting in an inefficient use of the filters. Therefore, an apparatus that would allow for balanced air flow across all of the rows of filters within the dirty-air chamber would be an important improvement in the art as it would allow the dirty-air to be distributed more evenly across the length of the filter cartridges thus resulting in a more efficient filtering of the air.